A different perspective on doctor shortages

We tend to blame governments for many of our problems, including the doctor shortage. But is that truly the case or have they been trying to clean up a systemic mess, created by past cliques?

This situation has been a long time evolving and to some extent is the product of systemic ignorance and self-servitude. For decades, we were warned of the impending health care doom, once the baby-boomers reached retirement years. But, those warnings were largely ignored until the seriousness of the effects required increasing levels of crisis management. That reality has put the medical profession in the same situation as the Cape Breton Regional Municipality (CBRM) council, trying to provide previous levels of services with a declining support base. It’s called managing decline.

The problem began as far back as the 1960s when half of the graduating classes were told they couldn’t be doctors. Instead, they had to become nurses. This area had few female doctors prior to the 1990s and most weren’t educated in Atlantic Canada. Medical schools, like many professional institutions, were male dominated cliques. Many of those strong, intelligent young nurses worked alongside doctors from the ER to the OR. They obviously had the ability and could handle the rigors and challenges of the profession. However, their exclusion was more likely because they had productive mammary glands, a vagina and a uterus, instead of those extra dough-boy appendages.

Just imagine what the present situation would look like if only two per cent of those local nurses had been encouraged to become doctors three generations ago, and if that percentage increased slightly with each generation. Would there be a doctor shortage today?

Thank God for Human Rights Commissions. To those young women who are contemplating medical school, the 21st century is yours for the taking. Go for it, we need you.

In the mid-1970s, three young doctors came home to Glace Bay and set up a clinic. Imagine, a clinic, with a doctor available 24/7, in the 1970s. How avantgarde. Too much so for Glace Bay’s old guard it seems and all three shortly left for the United States.

The millennials (“Y” generation), those born in the early 1980s and later, are changing every aspect of society, including the medical profession. They have the ability and the credentials, but they are calling the shots. If they don’t like what you have to offer, they will go elsewhere. They don’t want the 80-hour-week, family practice. They are looking for collaborative clinics, even if it means less money, as long as they have time for themselves and their families … a better quality of life.

The present government continues to recruit doctors and create collaborative clinics. But it also added a potential gamechanger by increasing funding for 10 more seats in the Dalhousie’s Family Medicine Residency Program, with half of those designated for Cape Breton. If that had been introduced around 2000, and perpetuated annually, it would have produced around 100 new doctors provincially, with 40-50 of those designated for Cape Breton. Wow, how visionary. Al Moore Glace Bay